After leaving Ladysmith on Wednesday, July 30th, Darrel and I went to pull shrimp pots and fish and planned to catch up with the Bryant’s later at Wallace Island. We did a little better with the shrimp than we had the whole trip. We ended up with about 100, and we also caught 4 crab. Darrel was able to catch a few rock cod and one under-sized ling cod. I, again, caught nothing!

Wallace Island is a long narrow island with little on it. The anchorage was also long and narrow and the boats were far in the back anchored and stern tied to shore. I cooked steak, potatoes, and had leftover cabbage salad. The Bryant’s cooked their own chicken, mac & cheese, and salad. It was so quiet in the area that they didn’t want to fire up their generators and disturb the peace – mostly sailboaters in the anchorage.

The next morning I cooked up our crab and Carl’s and then we all took off. They were headed for Ganges and we decided to head to Sydney as it was Thursday and there is a huge street fair/market on Thursday nights.

We pulled our crab pots and stored them – not too many shrimp. Then trolled for salmon. After a while, we pulled the lines in and stopped to bottom fish. Darrel caught one small rock cod and I didn’t even bother dropping a line since I hadn’t been successful anyway.

We decided to move to another spot so started the engine and took off. Almost immediately, the engine started popping and acting strange – again! It seemed to me very similar to the problems we had around the 4th of July with the fuel pump. Darrel tried changing fuel filters while I putted us along on the kicker motor. At one point, a ferry was heading right for us and blasted us with his horn, even though I was going as fast as the kicker would take us. I fired up the big engine and even though it was backfiring and starved for gas, managed to get us a few yards further/quicker and avoided being rammed.

I told Darrel I was setting a course to Roche Harbor and even using the kicker motor we could be on dock by 5 or 6. So, off we went. At one point, we were only going about 1 mile an hour due to the current, but we averaged around 4 mph.

We pulled up to the Customs dock around 5:30 and I saw a man get off a boat to come help us dock. It was Roger Hazzard, a friend from the club. I got to talking with him and Darrel got the passports and went into the Customs office and came back out with an agent who told Roger, in no uncertain terms, to get back on his boat until we were done.

We got our slip and docked the boat and I got a text from Karen, Roger’s wife, inviting us for dinner since we had had such a long day. Yes! We had a very pleasant evening visiting with them and eating a very good barbecue chicken dinner.

The boat started up again with no problem so we decided to fuel up and head for home. If we ran into any problems, we would find the nearest port and Darrel would go get the truck and trailer and we would haul it home. But, it ran fine all the 110 miles home! It is crazy making to have it do this!

Marilee came and picked us up and took us home since we hadn’t left a vehicle at the club. We went back and unloaded it and brought the stuff home. Darrel just went back to throw the crab pots in and maybe troll for some salmon.

Three weeks to the day, we made it safely, but much poorer, home. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Sunset at Roche Harbor.